New York’s Union Square Cafe will use Apple Watches to enhance customer service

New York’s Union Square Cafe will use Apple Watches to enhance its customer service efforts when the restaurant re-opens next month, reports Eater.

When Meyer’s 30-year-old Union Square Cafe reopens in Manhattan next month, every floor manager and sommelier will be wearing an Apple Watch. And when a VIP walks through the front door, someone orders a bottle of wine, a new table is seated, a guest waits too long to order her or his drink, or a menu item runs out, every manager will get an alert via the tiny computer attached to their wrist.

The restaurant – owned by Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer – is working with reservation system startup Resy to deliver a hi-tech approach to the entire restaurant experience, from reservation to check …

While the piece doesn’t go into too much detail, it says that an iPad at the restaurant’s host stand pulls up information from the back-end system, which is then relayed to floor managers on their Apple Watches. In this way, they will be able to ‘recognize’ guests – VIP or not – and offer a more streamlined service.

When a guest has finished dining, a manager can ping the coat room attendant to fetch the guest’s coat; when a diner orders a bottle of wine, a manager need not print a ticket for the order — instead, ResyOS will ping the sommelier’s Apple Watch.

The reservation system itself is already pretty sophisticated: it allows those reserving a table to invite their guests to connect so that the restaurant will know all the names in a party, and you can text the restaurant if you’re running late, with the information popping up on the iPad on the host stand.

An integrated payment system allows guests to split the bill and pay with their phones.

The Union Square Cafe, which features what it describes as ‘new American cuisine,’ has won multiple awards, including Zagat’s ‘Favorite New York Restaurant’ eight times.

Companies in a range of business sectors are equipping their employees with Apple Watches. We learned earlier this week that healthcare company Aetna will be providing its 50,000 employees with Apple Watches through a new healthy living initiative.